ZuluTrade's signal providers
The ZuluTrade social network of traders is completely open. It is possible to register with a demo account or a real account from a partner forex broker. When a trader signs up with a real account, his or her history of previous trades is automatically imported into his or her ZuluTrade account history. There are just a few restrictions with demo accounts, such as the maximum number of open trades at the same time (limited to 30) and a minimum waiting time of 15 seconds between two trading orders.
To be ranked in the Top 1,000 Signal Providers list, your trading history of a minimum of 12 weeks must show a maximum drawdown of 30% and a profit per trade that is greater than 3 pips.
Depending on the follower's account, the signal provider's commission is 20% of profits or half a pip on each trade. The monetary value depends on the size of the lot and the currency pair, the current average is around $0.4 per mini lot. Commissions are paid to signal providers at the end of each month if their performance is positive (this also includes open positions). They lose all commissions if their performance is negative.
When you look at ZuluTrade's list of signal providers (click here to see the list), you will notice that almost all of their traders are sending signals from demo accounts. However, some of them are following their own demo account with a live account, but there is no guarantee that they are copying each trade because they can close them manually in their real account. On the other hand, with signal providers that directly use real accounts, you can rest assured that the trader is really committed to being profitable because his or her own money is at stake. In contrast, with traders who use a demo account, you cannot be certain that their own money is at stake, as they can follow themselves with the strict minimum, such as one micro lot.
Signal providers can use manual or automated trading strategies via a MetaTrader 4 expert advisor (EA), or a combination of both. ZuluTrade is able to indicate which traders are sending signals with an EA, but that does not mean that all transactions are sent by the robot, the trader can also make manual trades at the same time.
Anyone can become a signal provider just by opening a demo account, so this explains why the choice of traders you can follow is massive. You can find almost any type of trading strategy across the various forex currency pairs that are available. Your task is to take advantage of ZuluTrade's tools in order to find the best signals to follow.
Signal providers' profiles
We're now going to discuss the page that displays a trader's profile and trading statistics. The upper part of the screen (see picture) displays the signal provider's name, his or her rank in the list of ZuluTrade traders and small icons that you need to hover over with your mouse to see pop-up information revealing whether the trader uses a demo or a live account, an expert advisor, comments on the effectiveness of his or her strategy and the average rating given by followers (expressed as a number of stars). One can also see the broker that he or she uses, and below there is an "update" frame that allows the signal provider to explain his or her current positions.
The chart on the left shows a quick overview of historical performance. It shows the amount of real money allocated by followers to the supplier, the total profit in pips, profits/losses of open positions, the number of weeks of trading on ZuluTrade, the number of registered followers, ROI (return on investment), the number of trades to date, the percentage of winning trades, the average profit per trade, average length of a trade, the maximum loss (drawdown), the maximum number of trades open at the same time, the best and worst trade and the minimum amount of capital suggested in order to follow the supplier with 1 micro lot per trade.
In the "What others say about me" section, you can see the rating given by followers (only those who have a real account) and their comments.
ZuluTrade's signal providers can be assessed in three areas:
Les fournisseurs de signaux sur ZuluTrade peuvent être évalués sur trois facteurs :
- in general, did you make money with this signal provider?
- does his or her strategy description reflect reality?
- Would you recommend this signal provider to other ZuluTrade users?
The comments on there cover the entire spectrum of the rainbow - some are constructive and useful while others are reactionary in relation to recent trades. You should scroll down over a longer period of time so that you can have a more accurate vision of the followers' satisfaction.
The "Strategy description" tab is written by the signal provider, who explains his or her strategy. The profile is approved by ZuluTrade, but the content is not verified. The forex signal provider can say that he or she has 10 years of trading experience, but nobody checks this information, unlike the trading statistics which are automatically verified by ZuluTrade. In addition, some signal providers do not update the description when they change their strategy.
At the bottom of the forex signal provider's profile page, you can see his or her full trading history. All trades done using the ZuluTrade social trading platform are displayed, along with each trade's high and low values before closing. Trading histories can be exported to Microsoft Excel, allowing you to easily perform your own analysis.
The other two tabs allow you to see open positions as well as the list of followers who have real accounts.
The "Performance" tab shows the monthly performance in pips. It's a very good indicator of a trading strategy's consistency over time. You can choose to display performances of completed trades or with pending profits or losses. This last factor is very useful because it shows the current situation at the end of each month and therefore allow you to find out if a signal provider has kept losing positions open to maintain a positive balance at the end of the month (in order to preserve his or her commissions because signal providers gain nothing if their performance is negative at the end of the month).
The "Trade Volume" section (option below the chart) displays the number of trades closed each month with a different colour for winning and losing trades. This chart is another good indicator of a signal supplier's consistency, as it can reveal dramatic changes in strategy (ex: a massive increase in trades).
The ranking chart shows the evolution of a signal provider in ZuluTrade's overall ranking. It is also an indicator of consistency over time that allows you to see if the signal provider is able to maintain his or her rank over the long-term.
In the "trading" tab you will find a chart that shows the percentage of transactions for each forex currency pair. The "Trading Timezone" section displays a chart that shows the amount and percentage of open transactions during the world's various trading sessions, namely the Asian-Australian, Europen, Europe-USA and USA zones.
The "Drawdown" tab shows a chart with the pips in drawndown versus the amount of pips accumulated over time. The drawdown is an indicator of the account's actual position, since it takes into current open positions. For example, if the difference between the orange line and the blue line is 1,000 pips, this means that the account's open positions were down 1,000 pips before returning to positive territory. Excessive latent losses can lead to a margin call if your account balance is not sufficient to cover open positions. This chart is therefore very important to estimate the strategy's risk level: if the blue line follows the orange line without significant gaps, the risk of the strategy is moderate, otherwise (if the blue line shows a wide gap with the orange one), the strategy may be profitable but extremely risky if you don't have enough available funds in your account.
The average slippage (by broker) chart is useful to see the average difference in pips between the trades executed by the supplier and the trades copied to followers' accounts. Slippage may vary, due to the forex signal provider's trading style and your broker. This is mainly because the spreads offered by brokers are different, and also because execution speeds are different, especially when important economic reports are published. As you can see, broker AAAFX is usually at the top of the ranking; this broker is owned by ZuluTrade and - in addition - it doesn't charge additional fees, unlike other brokers.
In summary, in addition to information on each trade executed by a trading signal provider, ZuluTrade also provides a wide selection of charts you can use for your analysis. If you prefer, you can even download the trading history into Excel and perform your own analysis. The available historical trading data is completely transparent and this is one of the benefits of ZuluTrade.
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